and to have escaped any injuries to his leg bone. His friends were quite happy about him till the morning of the second day, when his fingers began suddenly to twitch, and by four that afternoon Foorsut was dead.
Some time after this adventure Colonel Gordon Cumming was sent to do some work in the country beyond the Nerbudda, which was, at that period overrun with tigers. The animals found shelter in the broken ground, covered with high grass and sharp, prickly shrubs, from which they would steal out to attack cattle and sometimes men.
One day a villager came to Colonel Gordon Cumming, and told him that a tiger had rushed out and killed a man who had been gathering gum from a tree, in company with two friends; and they, being unarmed, could do nothing to save him.
As it was almost sunset, and the man was known to be dead, nothing was done that night; but as soon as it was light next morning, Gordon Cumming, with two officers, rode off to the jungle. Here some men were waiting with guns and elephants, and the place of attack being arranged, they went first to the gum trees where the man had met his death.
His body was still lying on the ground, bloody where the tiger’s teeth had torn it, but otherwise untouched, which looked as if the tigers had all gone elsewhere. However, men were sent up the trees to report if anything was to be seen, and the British officers took up their positions and advanced into the jungle.
They had not gone very far before a huge tiger sprung out of a watercourse where it had been hiding, and dashed up the bank. He was too far off to hit with certainty, and the bullets sent after him only put him out of temper, and he growled loudly as he disappeared into the nearest thicket. The hunters followed on his track at a safe distance, and once they caught sight of him, but again he was off, and was reported by the men in the
